http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
RICK LAZIO certainly wasn't my first choice to replace Rudy Giuliani as
Hillary Clinton's GOP opponent in New York's Senate race. His fake run
last summer, when it was clear the nomination was locked up for the
Mayor, was smarmy and self-aggrandizing. Still, I don't understand the
media's insistence on treating the four-term Congressman as if he's a
teenager.

Remember, the man is 42, defeated Tom Downey -- best bud of
slumlord Al Gore -- in a major '92 upset and is hardly the youngest person
ever to seek a job in the U.S. Senate. Liberals, who gush about Sen. Ted
Kennedy as one of the century's most accomplished legislators -- delusional
thinking at its most obvious -- forget that his family's political machine
bought his Massachusetts seat back in '62, long before he had to
contemplate wearing a girdle. President John F. Kennedy was in his
mid-30s when he defeated Henry Cabot Lodge in 1952; Delaware's Sen. Joe
Biden was even younger when he was first elected.

Yet New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has dubbed Lazio "Little
Ricky," an unfortunate nickname that'll probably stick. Writing about
the split lip he suffered at a parade last month, Dowd wrote: "But when
Little Ricky went tumbling down, the stature issue came bubbling up. He
looked like an eager puppy springing out of the gate and going all
splay-legged. Republicans fretted again: Is he ready for the big show?"

Dowd is mostly a nonpartisan monster: she'll go after any politician as
long as she can work a Hollywood blockbuster into her 800 words. But
when the going gets tough, you can count on Dowd to side with her
disgraceful colleague Frank Rich-although not as hysterically-and so
Gore is fairly safe this fall.

And Hamptons blowhard Jerry Della Femina, a Lazio supporter no less,
stoked this silliness by writing in the May 28 Daily News: "My problem
is that for the life of me I can't see Rick Lazio in the Senate of the
United States of America. Instead, I keep seeing him as the ambitious
second-in-command of a Ford dealership in Huntington, L.I." The New
Republic's Michelle Cottle, providing her own unasked-for spin in the
June 12 issue, also calls Lazio "Little Ricky" and claims he's not up to
the rigors of an election that's dwarfed only by the Bush-Gore battle.

The Suffolk County Congressman is up against a "Goliath in a pantsuit,"
Cottle writes. Sure. A "Goliath" who can't rise above 50 percent in the
polls. A "Goliath" who makes outrageous claims at rallies, like this one
in Manhattan last week: "For 30 years, I have fought for children and
families, for women and workers. And in this campaign, I've stood up for
New Yorkers who needed a voice. I'm not afraid of the tough fights."

As Rick Brookhiser eloquently pointed out in the June 5 New York
Observer: "Mrs. Clinton's only two marks on public affairs were to ruin
her husband's first term, by producing a Rube Goldberg health care plan,
and to be his beard for 25 years." What is all this baloney that Mrs.
Clinton spews about being a champion of the downtrodden, especially the
children? Does writing an innocuous book like It Takes a Village: And
Other Lessons Children Teach Us qualify her as a policy expert? She
ought to be consistent. In order for Bill Clinton to get himself
reelected in '96 he had to horse-trade with the GOP-controlled Congress.

Which meant the welfare reform bill, an overdue piece of legislation,
which conservatives favor, but one that I doubt "the New Yorkers who
needed a voice" endorsed. I doubt her good friend Al Sharpton thought
much of it either.

STILL STAYING LOCAL
Slate's Supreme Court correspondent Dahlia Lithwick took leave from
Washington, DC, to attend a Rick Lazio rally at Katz's Deli last week.
It's very difficult to stomach Beltway reporters' writing about New
York, and Lithwick provided an absurd article, "Rick Lazio, The Spice
Boy Candidate," on June 2. She begins: "The sidewalks of the Lower East
Side are paved with litter and the streets smell like fresh goat." As
any New Yorker knows, this simply isn't true anymore; it's a stereotype
from before the Giuliani administration. I know you can favorably
compare the Lower East Side's cleanliness level with that of those
desolate stretches of concrete in Washington. The gentrification of the
East Village and the Lower East Side is such an old story that even The
New York Times has written about it; I guess the Pony Express still
exists if someone like Lithwick smells "fresh goat" near Katz's.

Regie

It gets worse. Not a word in Lithwick's stupid article is devoted to
Lazio's career in Congress. Instead, it's all Talk magazine
breathlessness. The only difference is that the Slate writer gushes over
a Long Island Italian who eats corned beef erotically rather than about
Prince William's personal life and the lucky gals in it. Lithwick:

"Until today I was only amused by the puppy-splat candidate. Now I find
myself in a near-swoon. He is, as the Republicans intended, adorable.
Tim Robbins meets Regie from the Archie comic books. But married to
Betty, not Veronica. Creamy skin that cannot be sprayed on. A
heart-stopping smile of undistilled delight."

This woman "covers" the Supreme Court for Slate? Amazing. Aside from
the silliness about Lazio's looks, whether satirical or not, what's this
jazz about him being "as the Republicans intended, adorable"? I happen
to think that Lazio has a better chance of defeating Clinton than
Giuliani did, but that's probably a minority view, especially among the
state's Republican leaders. Rudy is anything but "adorable," even in his
new "humanized" state.

Also writing for Slate, on May 19, Jacob Weisberg mercifully sticks to
politics. It's his notion that it doesn't matter who the GOP puts up
against Hillary: even if Giuliani "were in good health and happily
married" he'd have been creamed. Likewise for Lazio. Why? Because of the
Al Gore's-coattails effect. This is quite a leap. While it's true that
Bill Clinton won New York by margins of 16 and 28 points, respectively,
in the '92 and '96 elections, it doesn't follow that the Vice President
will win the state by such a huge number. It's safe to say that New
York, unlike California, is pretty much a gimme for Gore, but it'd be
surprising, considering the popularity gulf between him and his boss, to
see him win by a landslide.

The antipathy toward Hillary is so strong that she'd need a massive,
know-nothing turnout to squeeze by. Which isn't likely, especially since
Gore's a bore and there's no Rudy to vote against. Remember that Bobby
Kennedy, brother of the then-recently martyred president, and
technically less of a carpetbagger than Hillary, defeated Republican
Kenneth Keating by a narrow margin in '64, while LBJ stomped Barry
Goldwater. It goes without saying that RFK was associated with a far
more beloved president than Gore is.

The New York Observer's Joe Conason had some difficulty in his column
last Wednesday believing the results of the Zogby poll that showed Lazio
and Hillary Clinton in a statistical dead heat, mostly because Zogby's
work appears in the New York Post. Zogby's a Democrat, as I'm sure
Conason knows, and although he couldn't have known it at the time, just
last Sunday, June 4, the pro-Hillary Daily News showed similar results
in its own poll, with Lazio down just four points to the First Lady. But
never mind the polls. My favorite snippet from Conason's continued
defense of the Clintons was when he accused the Post of "alternately
depict[ing] Hillary as Lady Macbeth and the Wicked Witch of the West."

Joe, you're right. And so is the Post, although perhaps the tabloid is
being a bit
charitable.

JWR contributor "Mugger" -- aka Russ Smith -- is the editor-in-chief and CEO of New York Press (www.nypress.com). Send your comments to him by clicking here.